This invention relates to an improved construction for alerting health-care professionals, such as nurses, orderlies and the like, in the event of undesirable movement by a patient in a hospital or other health-care facility. More specifically, the invention relates to an improved construction for alerting health-care professionals that can be activated upon a patient's undesirable movement and without a conscious choice by the patient to so activate. Additionally, the invention relates to an improved construction and method for alerting health-care professionals that is compatible with existing call systems.
Hospitals, nursing homes, and other health-care facilities conventionally have communication systems designed to allow patients to call nurses, orderlies or other health-care professionals. Traditionally, such call systems include an electronic communication system having a patient-operable signal device located at each patient's bed or treatment location. Such patient-operable signalers often consist of a button or switch unit connected by a message transmitting cord to a wall receptacle. The wall receptacle is usually connected to an information switching system, so that operation by the patient of the button or switch unit activates a signal within the information switching system, which thereafter operates an alarm that may be perceived or observed by a health-care professional at a remote location. Such health-care professional call systems are constructed in a variety of different configurations, and are generally well known to persons skilled in the art.
Existing health-care professional call systems have a significant drawback: activation of the system requires a conscious decision by the patient to call the health-care professional, because the patient must push the button or throw the switch. Consequently, patients who are confused, have a nocturnal disorientation, require assistance in moving where there is evidence they will not ask for help, are under the influence of narcotics or sedatives, or are subject to temporary or permanent disorientation, are often unable to activate the call system. Moreover, conventional call systems cannot be activated by sleeping patients. In many instances, such patients undergo undesirable movement, as, for example, when attempting to sit upright or get out of bed, or when they are attached to some medical treatment apparatus, and thereby aggravate their condition. Further, disoriented patients, or patients unable to walk without the assistance of crutches or some other device, may often in the initial moments of waking believe themselves to be at home and in familiar surroundings. Such patients will occasionally attempt to get out of bed, or move in some other undesirable manner, while not realizing that they are suffering from a partially or wholly disabling injury. The patient's attempt at movement can result in new injuries or aggravation of old injuries if a health-care professional is not alerted immediately to assist the movement.
Conventionally, confused and disoriented patients of the kind described above have been protected by subjecting them to an increased frequency of surveillance by health-care professionals or by relying on the patient's ability to activate the existing call system after the disorientation has ceased. In some instances, health-care professionals are alerted by other patients in the vicinity. Alternatively, sophisticated devices have been attached to the patient to monitor various aspects of a patient's physiology and movement, such as heart rate, blood pressure, and other functions, so that when an undesirable variation in those function occurs, the devices automatically produce a signal or sound an alarm summoning a health-care professional. Such systems are normally expensive, cumbersome, and require elaborate supervision and maintenance. Sophisticated monitoring systems are therefore primarily used on patient's for whom such elaborate measures are required, such as patients undergoing intensive care.
It is therefore desirable that some relatively inexpensive and simple construction be developed for signaling health-care professionals upon any undesirable motion of a confused, disoriented, or sedated patient. Ideally, such a construction and method would operate through interaction with existing health-care professional call systems, so that extensive modification and installation of an elaborate new electronic communication systems will not be necessary. Moreover, it is desirable that such a system be constructed in a manner providing patients the option to activate the health-care professional alert system on their own conscious choice, without relying on undesirable movements.
Conventional health-care professional call systems are normally automatically activated when the button or switch unit is disconnected from the electronic signaling system. The connection between the cord and the wall receptacle normally consists of a plug at the end of the cord mateable with a receptacle mounted into a wall. The electronic signaling system includes a detector that determines when the plug has been removed from the receptacle, and upon such an occurrence activates the call signaler. Such systems are normally present in health-care professional alert systems that are "wired in" to the walls and physical structures of the health-care facility. Of course, "wired in" facilities are not necessary, and receptacles for call unit cords, and the entire system, may be attached to or rest on any structure, such as the patient's bed or surrounding furniture.